19 ms·

I don't miss the days when you had to physically send a paper form with a cheque or postal order, go to a bank, wait 28 days for things to be delivered, stand i

I don't miss the days when you had to physically send a paper form with a cheque or postal order, go to a bank, wait 28 days for things to be delivered, stand in line at a post office, or phone someone up to get mundane stuff done. Can you imagine sorting out car insurance quotes or booking flights/hotels or doing your tax return without the internet? What a ballache! The modern internet has been utterly transformative and has made modern life so much easier and simpler. Don't forget about all the useful things you take for granted now that weren't possible then because the internet wasn't commercialised at the time. The old internet is still there, some if it actually physically still there - i.e. still on the server/URL it was on back in the day (I find this kinda cool in a way - these sort of mary-celeste servers ticking away somewhere, untouched for 20 years but someone still cares enough to pay to keep it running). Perhaps less people make their own websites these days, but there is still a thriving and still-as-useless ("not much yet - check back soon!") collection of random personal websites on dat, gopher and ipfs. Stumbling onto these things or hearing about them via word of mouth/keyboard was always part of the joy of 90s internet.

samplatt 7y ago
>mary-celeste servers That is a wonderful term for it, and a delicious mental image.
Aeolun 7y ago
> sorting out car insurance quotes or booking flights/hotels Due to the limitations of the medium, I think this actually used to be easier (if slower). You certainly didn’t get a different price if you were booking a minute later.
AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
>postal order >a bank >stand in line at a post office >car insurance quotes >booking flights/hotels >tax return These conveniences you cite of the modern internet all feel like they help the other side of the relationship even more than they help you. Imagine how much the airlines, banks, tax collectors, and insurance companies love the modern internet, making it all the more convenient for you to interact with their products and services! And at such scale! My point here is that, on the intellectual front, the old internet was a lot more transformative for humankind than the state of today's "cable television as a service" internet we endure today.
- pcnix 7y ago
  How does that change anything? The amount of ease of use you get from the internet is not zero-sum; everyone benefits from it. Calling the internet "cable television as a service" is ignoring the incredible reach and user-friendliness of the modern internet, and all the advantages that come from that. Nostalgia is okay, but that doesn't change the fact that the current internet brings a lot more information to a lot more people, albeit with differing quality. It has absolutely changed humanity for the better, and is orders of magnitude more transformative than what you seem to be calling old internet.
  - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
    You could make the same argument about the television remote control as it relates to broadcast TV. There is a popular phrase these days, "progress trap," [0] which I think adequately explains the issues with both today's internet and the remote control. We have indeed made some advancements in some interesting fields due to the modern UI of the web, but what underlies this is a really heavy-handed plasticity on the infrastructure/architecture fronts. That is what the earlier web lacked, and what made it such a fantastic, democratized resource for information and communication. The remote control achieved the same thing for broadcast TV - a way to make the format easier to use mindlessly. And what it enabled was channel surfing: building it into the hunter-gatherer human mind that the TV was a universe to be explored, filled with wondrous gifts for the would-be explorer to uncover. But that's a lie merely proposed by the interface - the most common thing to land on during a channel surf is a network advertisement. You will of course land on some shows, too, but the channel surfer is destined to see more than a couple of ads before they are finished with their remote. Getting the internet away from its keyboard-driven beginnings has led to a similar outcome on the web, and it's plain to see. The advent of touch screens has made this interface/architecture authoritarianism even harder to avoid now that the entire package has been shrunk to the size of one's palm and available at a moment's notice or a passing whim. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap

samplatt 7y ago

>mary-celeste servers That is a wonderful term for it, and a delicious mental image.

Aeolun 7y ago

> sorting out car insurance quotes or booking flights/hotels Due to the limitations of the medium, I think this actually used to be easier (if slower). You certainly didn’t get a different price if you were booking a minute later.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago

>postal order >a bank >stand in line at a post office >car insurance quotes >booking flights/hotels >tax return These conveniences you cite of the modern internet all feel like they help the other side of the relationship even more than they help you. Imagine how much the airlines, banks, tax collectors, and insurance companies love the modern internet, making it all the more convenient for you to interact with their products and services! And at such scale! My point here is that, on the intellectual front, the old internet was a lot more transformative for humankind than the state of today's "cable television as a service" internet we endure today.

pcnix 7y ago
How does that change anything? The amount of ease of use you get from the internet is not zero-sum; everyone benefits from it. Calling the internet "cable television as a service" is ignoring the incredible reach and user-friendliness of the modern internet, and all the advantages that come from that. Nostalgia is okay, but that doesn't change the fact that the current internet brings a lot more information to a lot more people, albeit with differing quality. It has absolutely changed humanity for the better, and is orders of magnitude more transformative than what you seem to be calling old internet.
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
  You could make the same argument about the television remote control as it relates to broadcast TV. There is a popular phrase these days, "progress trap," [0] which I think adequately explains the issues with both today's internet and the remote control. We have indeed made some advancements in some interesting fields due to the modern UI of the web, but what underlies this is a really heavy-handed plasticity on the infrastructure/architecture fronts. That is what the earlier web lacked, and what made it such a fantastic, democratized resource for information and communication. The remote control achieved the same thing for broadcast TV - a way to make the format easier to use mindlessly. And what it enabled was channel surfing: building it into the hunter-gatherer human mind that the TV was a universe to be explored, filled with wondrous gifts for the would-be explorer to uncover. But that's a lie merely proposed by the interface - the most common thing to land on during a channel surf is a network advertisement. You will of course land on some shows, too, but the channel surfer is destined to see more than a couple of ads before they are finished with their remote. Getting the internet away from its keyboard-driven beginnings has led to a similar outcome on the web, and it's plain to see. The advent of touch screens has made this interface/architecture authoritarianism even harder to avoid now that the entire package has been shrunk to the size of one's palm and available at a moment's notice or a passing whim. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap